... of President Nixon, did not involve any use of the US FOI Act anyway. Ford's attempt to use Watergate as an excuse to 'smother' FOI managed to achieve the opposite, with Congress passing a series of enhancements strengthening the FOI Act rather than weakening it. Nate Jones is director of the FOI project run by George Washington University's National Security Archive (ironically abbreviated to NSA), a cross-disciplinary effort between academics and journalists which (to cite the project's own raison d'etre)'….combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S . documents (" the world's largest nongovernmental ...

... 2007 column, written after seeing the Tricycle Theatre's play Called to Account, Berlins outlined a potential case against Blair. 'The main issues were the obvious ones; the shift from insisting that invasion was necessary because of weapons of mass destruction to asserting that the motive was regime change; what happened behind the scenes over the second [abandoned] security council resolution; and the still unexplained reason for Lord Goldsmith's quick change of mind culminating in his advice that starting the war was legal even without UN backing. ' Berlins speculated: 'Even more shocking, if true, is the allegation that, many months before March 2003. Bush and Blair had already agreed to invade Iraq, no ...

... its susceptibility to tiresome Congressional oversight. He built up his own covert operations organisation, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), that was intended to supplant the CIA and give the administration a completely free hand in the destruction of America's enemies. JSOC was, at this time, 'the most closely guarded secret force in the US national security apparatus'. It only went public after the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Scahill explores JSOC's record during the occupation of Iraq. Here the US Army found itself fighting a full-blown insurgency which, for a while, actually looked capable of making the American position untenable. The scale of the resistance saw the American military eventually ...

... official media of the state of Iran and the liberal democratic consensus of the western democracies. The first part of the book is a look at Iran from the inside. It gives a full account of the events that lead up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that overthrew the hated regime of the 'Shah of Persia' and his equally hated security and police apparatus; explains why the revolution took the form of both a nationalist struggle and a religious one; and what the results of this have been for the people of Iran. It also explains the different class interests of the 'bazaar', the unemployed and the salaried working classes, and how the present leader of Iran, ...

... Bakhsh, a big shareholder in Harken, has made investments in Saudi Arabia with Ghaith Pharaon, BCCI's most important front man.... '( 19) With the involvement of Sheikh Bakhsh, came the appointment of his representative Talat Othman on Harken's board. After the Bahrain deal, Othman met with the President, and his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, three times in 1990.(20) Bush Snr. also met with the Saudi bin Laden family, in 1998 and 2000 in Jeddah. Jean Becker, his Chief of Staff said, 'President Bush does not have a relationship with the bin Laden family. He's met them twice. ' (21) ...

... wing, unprincipled force that it was under Dick Spring. Under the leadership of Pat Rabbitte, a highly principled and able leader, the old Democratic Left faction of the Labour Party, which has its origins in the Workers Party and before that, in Official Sinn Fein, now runs the Party. It has also, quite correctly, secured an electoral pact with Fine Gael, in the run-up to the next election. This necessary compromise is in accordance with what Labour supporters like myself (I still have a residence and vote in the Republic) see as a Gramscian 'war of position', whose long term aim is a Labour government. Against this coalition is ...

... , at the end of which the author offers a (presumably classical Marxist) explanation of the growth of interest on the British Left in things spooky and conspiratorial. He suggests 'the timing of this is not fortuitous: .. .. the Conservative Victories in 1979 and 1983, the defeat of the miners in 1985 (in which the security services played an intelligence gathering role)..... [and] the collapse of cherished beliefs..... led inescapably to the conclusion that there was a right-wing conspiracy which had hoodwinked the entire nation.... ' There has been an increase of interest in the state in general and the ...

... (J .C . Pollock, New English Library 1983) tells the story of these bizarre searches, based on the operations of Sarg. Major Daniel Lee Pitzer, with a foreword by Major General John K. Singlaub (Rtd). Singlaub (an old buddy of mercenary and arms dealer Mitch Werbell) is active in the American Security Council, and on the board of Western Goals, brainchild of right-wingers Larry McDonald (a leading John Bircher who died in KAL 007), and John Rees, editor of The Information Digest. Singlaub was dismissed by President Carter because he publicly opposed the withdrawal of some ground forces from South Korea. This may be explained ...

... a fraction of the cost. ' But, complete with Frewinesque digressions - my favourite is note 2, on a book called The History of Hitchin - and annotations, I found this parade of bureaucratic lacunae and minutiae oddly compelling. There are two discoveries of significance here. The first is a reference to 'Mr Scott, the Editor of Security Gazette'. What is the 'Security Gazette', with whom the 1964 FBI in London was 'maintain[ing] good relations'? The second concerns the late John Sparrow, Warden of All Souls College at Oxford for many years, on whom there is a substantial appendix. Sparrow, one of the earliest UK defenders of the ...

... in Lobster 36 ( 'Peter's Friends'?) I have remained close to David Shayler and Annie Machon, his girlfriend and also a former MI5 officer, since we first broke the story. Consequently, I can clarify the issue of whether David or Annie possessed or knew of 'concrete evidence' that senior Labour ministers had 'worked for the Security Services'. The reasons the Mail on Sunday did not publish this story is very simple: we knew it was completely untrue. The 'friend' of Shayler who briefed the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph did not understand the issues or the facts. This person hopelessly confused our original story about MI5's bugging of Mandelson and speculated wildly and ...